[All Platforms] Option to have a true shuffle

[jonathanleyerle]

So I’ve been noticing more and more recently that Spotify’s default shuffle feature doesn’t fully shuffle your songs. It does some sort of grouping to try to get similar songs together based off of what I’m sure is dozens of factors. Every time I shuffle a playlist (the one I noticed this with the most is ~100 songs and 6 hours of mostly full albums) it will group the songs mostly or completely together by album/artist, and given the number of times I’ve re-shuffled and checked the order there’s no way it’s just a coincidence. They also generally seem to be in the same order as well. If I hit shuffle play on a playlist it’ll generally put the same artists at the beginning every time.

With larger playlists of albums I am really not a fan of this shuffling method. If I have 6 hours of music on a playlist I will hardly ever have 6 hours to actually listen through the whole thing, but when I do listen to it I would like to hear all of the music on it equally, and not just the artist or two your algorithm likes to shuffle to first.

Anyways, I’m a reasonable man, all I’m asking for is an option to have a true shuffle (take all songs in the list, put them in a random order, and once they’re all played reshuffle them and play them again). Make it premium only if you want. I don’t think you should scrap the current shuffle algorithm because it sucks. Looking at some of the suggestions on here it seems like some people lobbied hard to have it that way. Just add an option for a true shuffle for those of us that don’t care about potentially getting the same song twice in a row.

[TheMacDaddy]

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"rozeboosje

Regular

9 days ago

It all makes sense when you realise who Spotify's customers REALLY are: record labels who have them over a barrel.

The real cash flow is coming from their corporate customers. Your "premium" subscriptions barely make a dent. So when there's a conflict of interest between their real source of income and the couple of pennies you give them every month, guess who will get shafted again, again, again and again.

You don't matter to Spotify. Once you realise that, your next step should be obvious."

Ditto. 100% spot on!

[dank13]

I guess this would be very handy for everyone that wants to move away from Spotify into Apple Music:
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/14/apple-music-transfer-tool/

Good bye dodgy shuffle! If you think your money is better somewhere else, Apple has just made it easier to do the switch. 

PS.: I'm not getting paid by Apple in any ways (I wish tho hahah) but that was the choice for me, as all my devices are Apple, including HomePods (which Spotify doesn't seem to care to support it either)

[Marshall3911]

If you think Apple Music ‘ shuffle will be better than Spotify you will be disappointed…

It will be different at the beginning but then you will hear the same songs again 

Plus , you’ll have to deal with the AM app , horrible search , buggy and I don’t even talk about Mac and windows which are worst 

I’ve tried the switch myself and back to Spotify 

[rozeboosje]

"If you think Apple Music ‘ shuffle will be better than Spotify you will be disappointed…"

I can't speak about Apple Music as I don't use it. I use Amazon Music.

In Amazon there are two ways to listen to playlists in "a different order".

They have a "Shuffle". A lot of people do not understand what happens when you "Shuffle" by randomly (or what algorithmically passes for "randomly") picking songs out of a list. In Spotify, in particular, their "Shuffle" works (or at least back then it did, no idea what it's like now) by first creating a "random" queue of 80 songs and then, as you're playing this queue, every time it pops song number 1 off the queue to play it it would add a new "random" song from the play list into the vacated 80th spot.

I illustrated with a small program that performed this functionality on a list of integers that by the time you get to the 100th or so "item" you would inevitably get "repeats", even if the algorithm was designed to be totally "honest". I put this on github and the technically minded  amongst you can find a link to it somewhere amongst these pages.

So a shuffle that just randomly accesses songs out of a list to queue them will start "repeating" songs even if it's unweighted and unbiased and totally honest. So if that's how Apple Music's shuffle works then, yeah, it may disappoint you. Same thing happens in Amazon Music. But it seems clear from this long, LONG thread that ON TOP OF THAT, Spotify's shuffle is dishonest, it favours some songs, artists or record labels over others, and on top of that it even seems that the algorithm is just FUBAR.

It's pathetic and I doubt that Apple Music's algorithm would be equally bad. Amazon Music's one, despite the inevitable flaws as I described above, certainly isn't as bad as Spotify's.

But this is just the randomized, "queued" shuffle algorithm. It cannot avoid "repeats".

Amazon Music, however, gives you a SECOND option: an option to randomize your play list.

The first option is like picking the top card off a deck, putting it back in, shuffling the deck again, then picking the next top card, repeat (though less inefficient as THAT, see the "80 song play queue" I mentioned above). Repeats are unavoidable.

The second option, however, is like shuffling the entire deck of cards, and then turning over each card one after the other until you reach the end. In THAT scenario, repeats are impossible.

Amazon Music gives you that option. Yes, last time I did that on my Windoze desktop it was broken, but I moved back to an older build and that let me do it so.... *shrug*.

Spotify simply doesn't let you do that. Apple Music? No idea. So I cannot comment on that. But there definitely is something better than Spotify "out there".

Maybe one day Amazon Music will also disappoint me to the extent that I will stop paying for their service. But it will be a cold day in Hades before I will ever spend another cent on the abomination that is Spotify.

[Slip269]

I'm currently on an Apple trial, and while it seemed ok at first it's definitely using an algorithm to select the songs.

It's biased towards the same/similar artists that Spotify is (the ones who pay the big bucks), although it's not as prolific as Spotify the artist repeats are still quite bad.

I've even hit shuffle a few times and it's put 10 songs by the same artist in a row (I wouldn't like to work the odds out of that happening randomly from a playlist of over 1000 songs)

Guess I'll keep trying the alternatives!

[rozeboosje]

Exactly. And if they ALL start to eff up their "shuffle" algorithms, I guess many of us will end up resorting to, dare I say the taboo word?..... Piracy

I guess history is cyclical.  Artists make music. Someone finds a way to sell and distribute it to listeners. At first, listeners get what they want. Then the producers and the salespeople think they can force people to consume their product the way they want them to consume it, and they start to ignore the wishes of listeners. Listeners get frustrated and find alternative ways to get what they want.

I've been through at least two cycles of this. First the hysterical "HoMeCoPinG iS KiLLiNg MuSiC". Then "YoU wOuLdN'T sTeAL a CaR" and nobody took the blindest bit of notice because, get this Spotify, people do NOT take kindly to having a particular way of consuming a product forced down their throats.

The record labels got caught out when people refused to play ball and eventually Spotify put "streaming" on a legal footing. Until that happened people, out of sheer frustration, not malice, resorted to piracy.

Something like that will happen to Spotify, too, and any streaming music provider that thinks it may be a good idea to follow the same business model. May take another few years, but it will happen.

By then, of course, Daniel Ek can happily retire on his huge pile of wealth. That's a shame.

[rozeboosje]

And when someone comes up with the next great idea, Spotify will be relegated to insignificance, listeners will be happy for a while, and then money starts talking.

Rinse

Repeat

[Mookpsu]

Rozeboosje it makes you wonder why we bailed on our MP3 players. I've been
with Amazon Music for many years and have no complaints with their shuffle.
As I type this I am listening to a 400 song custom playlist with shuffle
on. As it should it will play every song in random order with no repeats
until every song has been played once. I only switched to S**tify a few
years back because they seemed to integrate better with my Chromecast but
the lack of a true shuffle was enough to take me back to A.M. My biggest
complaint with A.M. (at least the Android app) is that when you close the
app it also closes out whatever playlist you were listening to. I currently
use version 17.16.3 which does not have this problem. I'm sure at some
point that version of the app will no longer work at which point I will be
searching high and low for an MP3 player so I can listen to what I want
when I want in whatever order I want

[mike369mike]

Please give us a true shuffle option — with no algorithm.

All we’re asking for is basic functionality:

• Randomly select a song from the playlist.

• Don’t repeat any song until all others have been played.

• This should remain true even if we pause, switch playlists, or close the app.

That’s it. Simple.

It’s frustrating that your current shuffle often repeats songs before others are played. It feels like Spotify thinks it knows better than the listener — but we just want to hear our music the way we choose. Please respect that and give your customers more control.

[rozeboosje]

A shuffle without an algorithm is impossible. Maybe when Spotify start using quantum computers 🤪

But it's possible to write algorithms that are so chaotic that to us, humans, they will feel like "random".

Having said that, what you're describing is not "shuffle", it's "randomise playlist".

Like what Amazon Music lets you do